Here's a Facebook photo album from the 2018 DrivingSales Presidents Club in Fort Lauderdale. Be sure to tag yourself in the photos!

John Stix, keynote speaker for the DrivingSales Canadian Dealer Forum 2018, speaks at the Human Capital Institute in Denver about passion, company values and how to drive engagement.

I’m on a mission to personally speak to leaders around the world, and to tell our story in the hopes that you’ll find inspiration.

Year 10- I walked in the door of the dream that I helped create.

Imagine- from a basement apartment we started with nothing. The dream that I helped create, and I didn’t want to be there anymore.

I lost my passion.

It was a very hopeless feeling.

I knew that this was not sustainable.

This was something that could tear us apart, and tear us down.

So I did what any entrepreneur would do.

I went into my office, closed the door, and said, “I have to fix myself.”

My staff could sense that I was disengaged, and I’m not being authentic.

I became engaged with what that meant.

I started reading ancient philosophies, and studied what made leaders back then.

How did they engage before the internet?

I realized that I found my purpose as a purpose again.

It wasn’t marketing, sales or being a president.

It was about caring for people.

I forgot that we really showed we cared at one point.

And at that moment in time, I started to look inward to me as a leader, and what I could do.

We created a brand new mantra, company purpose and a whole set of company values.

“I’m in” is an emotion that binds us all together.

Try to look inward. Try to be vulnerable, and look inside to find your authentic self as a leader.

Through that you will find passion, and from that passion you will find happiness and a purpose that comes with engagement.

DrivingSales Canadian Dealer Forum keynote Andrew Au spoke on the digital transformation that's taking place in today's economy, and I thought this talk would be of interest to Canadian dealers.

I started my career at Pepsi as a product marketer and so my perspective has been on how to manage channel and the different vendors, and now I sit on the agency side, and I help companies tell their digital transformation story.

So as we think about digital transformation, it’s much more than just digitizing paper-based processes. This is truly the fourth Industrial revolution, and it's changing how we communicate and innovate.

There's been a lot of change with technology, but the constant– the North Star–  always remains constant. How do you create new value for your business and for your customers, and how do you create a better customer experience? Although we stand on this brink of a technological revolution, we see that technology is outpacing the evolution of business processes. It's created this shift in how we create value and how we create customer experiences, and if we take a look at some of the market factors. we're seeing
we have access to more data than we ever had before. 

We have smarter analytics and access to cloud computing, and that's changing the consumer expectation.

There's now a higher consumer expectation.

We see the rise of this empowered consumer, and we're also seeing a shift in workplace demographics and how we manage our talent.

This requires us to reinvent our processes, and reinvent our business models.

There's never been a better time to take on Amazon, because we have access to technology that we don't need to build anymore– we can lease it!

Understanding your target audience is a critical step to running successful Facebook ad campaigns. We've put together an expansive list of audience targeting options your dealership should consider using for your next marketing campaign.

Humans have an incalculable memory, but we lack processing speed.

We process information at about 120 bits per second, and you're currently using 60 of that watching this video.

That's why we're awful multitaskers.

You give someone six tasks, they're not going to do one well and five poorly.

They're going to do six poorly.

So you want to give that person on your website the ability to not overload their "processor".

It takes a person 50 miliseconds to determine whether they'll have a mental breakdown while viewing your website.

Let's take a page out of the online retailer's playbook, because they're better at this than dealers are.

The top 5 online retailers converted 3.3%, and Amazon converts at 13.3%.

What's the difference?

Two things:
• Familiarity, and
• Simplicity

Not making people overthink it.

"Facebook advertising is over."

"DOA."

That’s what a lot of digital marketing “gurus” are saying right now, after all the data and privacy news Facebook is facing.

My thoughts?

I think the way we advertise on Facebook will change, including how we access personal data to build our audiences.

But as far as Facebook advertising goes, it’s still business as usual.

Let’s play devil’s advocate and say that Facebook ads go the way of the dinosaur.

What would happen?

Well, for some dealerships, a majority of their leads would dry up overnight.

These dealerships placed a big chunk of their eggs in the Facebook basket.

But here’s what I think: Facebook is just one of many places that you can get traffic.

In fact, successful dealerships will have more than one source of traffic and leads, and not become too dependent on one.

Take a look at your Google Analytics, and under the Acquisition menu find your top channels of traffic.

That pie chart should have equal representation across organic and paid channels.

So my advice is to stop worrying about things you can’t control, like paid acquisition, and start focusing on building a real, tangible asset through Search Engine Optimization.

With SEO best practices in place, including an easy to navigate website, searchable and indexible content, and trusted sources of authority citing your website, you’ll have a lead generating machine that will continue to work as advertising platforms come and go.

Ever clicked on LingsCars.com? DSES 2017 Keynote Andrew Davis explains what "Where's Waldo" and this website can teach us about marketing.

According to the State of Automotive Attribution study, most dealers felt that accurate measurement of their marketing campaigns is important, with most relying on in-house reporting (68 percent) and/or vendor reporting (64 percent).

However, only 30 percent of dealers reported being satisfied with how they measure data.

When asked how knowledgeable they were about marketing attribution, 30 percent said they believe attribution and analytics are important, but don’t know where to begin.

20 percent said they didn’t know anything about marketing attribution.

According to the study, 68 percent of dealership aren’t effectively using (or, worse, failing to use) any type of marketing attribution to measure their advertising results.

Attribution, the ability to track marketing investments along the path to purchase, is an essential tool for automotive dealerships when it comes to understanding which elements within their marketing basket are the most effective at generating sales.

Analytics are also key when it comes to tracking and measuring data; after all, without them, what would you be tracking?

So what should your dealership be measuring?

Buyer Analytics

In the early 2010s, dealer analytics leaned heavily on vehicle pricing tools, letting dealers see the pricing information in their markets and price the vehicles on their lots accordingly.

While it’s still a valuable tool, it’s widespread and commonly used and thus, unfortunately, less likely to set you apart.

Understanding the “right buyer” for your dealership and aligning the right inventory for that right buyer can be critical to moving customers down the purchase funnel.

You shouldn’t just be tracking customers who’ve made purchases at your dealership; it’s important to also analyze the customers that considered buying a vehicle from you.

“These statistics can prove to be invaluable to dealerships as it causes them to consider questions regarding those consumers. Consumers that were touched by the media who entered the dealership’s showroom, or visited their car lot, but didn’t make a purchase can be vital for the dealerships. These figures can be tracked by implementing physical beacons or even through mobile listening.”

Predictive Analytics

To stay ahead, you need to understand in which direction the market is moving, not where it used to be.

Ask yourself: which vehicles should you be stocking based on target buyers?

Do you currently stock vehicles unlikely to drive demand, whether they don’t match your dealership profile or align to target customers?

Still, data is no replacement for experience; the two work together.

Dealers who combine their experience with the right data outputs can allow the best, most informed decisions to be made.

This is, after all, where predictive analytics’s strength lies: providing leading indicators based on things like market movements, competitive actions, and inventory shifts to help your dealership come out on top.

Sales end in the dealership showroom, but, more often than not, they begin online.

And as technology evolves and moves forward, so do attribution models.

Plus, consumers have access to (and are thus being influenced by) a number of sources like comparing sites and reviews of automakers, models, and dealerships when searching for the best deal.

It’s more important now than ever that dealers be on top of their marketing game in order to get as many customers as possible.

Knowing which sources lead customers to your business - and which are a waste of money - is an enormous help when it comes to making your marketing decisions.

As such, it’s vital for your dealership’s success that you measure analytics and attribution to make sure everything is running smoothly.

Great SEO (Search Engine Optimization) performance of a dealership’s website is a must-have to be competitive.

Google continues to be the king of search engines – and that’s not changing anytime soon.

It’s important dealerships and/or their SEO vendor stay current on Google’s algorithmic changes that might impact the effectiveness of their websites.

Search engines like Google are responsible for the majority of dealership website traffic.

SEO is critical to dealerships’ organic traffic because it allows search engines top find their website and recognize its relevancy to the searches that users perform.

When a user searches keywords on a search engine (e.g. Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc.), dealerships’ websites are crawled for both the creative and technical components that algorithmically rank their website.

Remember, the search engine is crawling all dealerships’ websites nearby the user’s location, which likely includes competitors.

Dealerships should ensure their website is fully optimized to take advantage of all potential organic results from search engines to compete on brand awareness, new and used car leads, and parts and service new/returning business.

Depending on the current state of a website, the process of optimization for the desired keywords and terms can take months.

Additionally, once your dealership’s website rises to the top, it takes continuous work to stay there.

CHAPTER 1:
How To Choose The Best SEO Vendor For Your Dealership

Great SEO requires constant attention to an ever-changing digital marketing landscape that can be complicated.

Just like the inside and outside of a dealership’s showroom, their website needs continuous monitoring and upkeep.

Because SEO is so detrimental to a dealership’s success, many dealerships hire an SEO vendor.

Anytime a dealership partners with an outside vendor, appropriate vetting should take place.

Research time is often needed to find a vendor who can assist a store to achieve their digital marketing goals.

To begin, dealerships should document the challenges they are facing in detail along with their short-term and long-term SEO goals.

While reviewing their challenges and goals, pay close attention to the type of service and features you would like your SEO vendor to offer.

Luckily, there is a non-biased resource that has been collecting thousands of vendor ratings from dealership professionals for years that have been verified to help stores research the best vendors to achieve their goals.

DrivingSales Vendor Ratings is the best resource to research and view verified feedback from other dealership professionals who are current/pasts customers of various vendors in retail automotive.

DrivingSales Vendor Ratings allows dealerships to save valuable time deciding which vendors to consider.

When considering a SEO vendor for your dealership, find out what core services they offer.

Here are a handful of services to consider: On page optimization, off page optimization, needs analysis, keyword analysis and reporting methods.

Most vendors sell their services in different pricing “packages.”

Dealerships should weight their SEO goals along with their budget when considering any vendor product or service.

CHAPTER 2:
How To Optimize Your Website For Mobile Devices

There are several onsite and offsite differentiators that impact the SEO of a dealership’s website directly and indirectly.

Mobile searches have been increasing for years and as of 2015 more searches took place on a mobile devices than on computers in the U.S.

According to Hitwise, almost 60% of U.S. searches were from a mobile device.

edgeofthewebradio.com

Mobile usage is continuing to grow and plays a vital role in the SEO success for dealerships’ websites.

It’s important to ensure your content and web design look great on mobile devices while enabling search engines to decide what kinds of queries you should rank for as Google is moving towards a mobile-first index.

Part of a solid SEO strategy should entail analyzing mobile website visitors' behavior to look for opportunities.

CHAPTER 3:
How SEO Can Help You Connect With Local Customers

Local SEO is another essential part of a strong SEO strategy.

According to BrightLocal, “Local SEO helps businesses promote themselves online to local customers within a geographic area. The difference between local SEO and organic SEO is intent. Google can (pretty well, too) pick out search queries that have ‘local intent,’ meaning the searcher wants search engine results with local companies.”

bluecorona.com

Per GO-Globe, almost 50% of searches on Google are for local products and services.

Take advantage of Google Posts.

Dealers should make sure their dealership’s Google My Business profiles are up-to-date.

Be sure to optimize your URL tags and content.

Another aspect to consider is citations.

Dealerships should make sure their name, address and phone number are consistent across their websites, Google My Business, and trusted citation sites.

CHAPTER 4:
Video SEO Best Practices,
Including YouTube

It’s 2018, which means you can’t go too far into any digital marketing strategy without mentioning video and SEO is no exception.

There are several video ranking factors that can help dealerships with their SEO.

This is partially due to the fact 1/3 of all online activity is spent watching videos.

Not only that, but YouTube is the second largest search engine behind Google.

Dealerships should be considering how to produce high volume, quality videos for their websites along with YouTube and social media to increase their SEO performance.

To engage potential customers, ensure your videos have a nice hook to keep them engaged during the first 15-seconds.

Dealerships should consider creating longer parts and service educational videos for YouTube as the number one ranking factor is total watch time.

Use the exacted keyword once in the title of the video because Google and YouTube use it to understand what the video is all about.

Be sure to say your keyword in the video, otherwise YouTube will penalize your ranking.

Courtesy of: Quick Sprout

CHAPTER 5:
Website Optimization Checklist

On-page optimization

On page optimization focuses on optimizing the content and other aspects of a web page, which communicates to search engines each page is about. Dealership professionals shouldn’t be afraid to ask their potential SEO vendor how they approach optimizing on page content and let them explain their philosophy.

backlinko.com

Off-page optimization

Does the SEO vendor understand off-page elements and what they can do for your website? Off-page services often include social media, blogging and link building from relevant websites. It is also important for dealerships to find a SEO vendor that understands who they are and what their, “Why buy from me?” message is. Find a vendor who understands retail automotive and how new and used car online leads are generated. Dealerships should make sure their vendor can help with their parts and service web pages as well if it’s not being overseen in house.

moz.com

Needs analysis

The SEO vendor who wins a dealership’s business should understand their needs and what they hope to accomplish (short-term and long-term goals). During the needs analysis process, make sure the company understands retail automotive. They should be asking intelligent questions about where the dealership has been from a digital marketing perspective and ask about the history of the dealership’s website.

Keyword analysis

Without effective keywords, an effective SEO campaign cannot be achieved. Ask and understand how a prospective SEO vendor selects keywords or building links to your website. Make sure they know how to analyze a keyword’s volume appropriately.

Reporting methods

Ensure the SEO vendor being considered can provide reports, which easily show the progress of a dealership’s SEO campaign regularly. The reports should provide enough information to see each individual aspect of what a dealership is paying for and paint a clear picture as to where to go next from a strategy perspective.

In the present market, there is an ongoing shift from a product-driven approach to a customer-centric approach.

And as customer expectations evolve, technology must adapt and grow to keep up.

So it goes for online retailing.

If we want to stay ahead of the curve, the process must be converted into a single online experience: an integrated, accurate, and cohesive process that simultaneously builds trust and a relationship with the customer.

Here are four ways dealerships can evaluate potential online retailing opportunities and assess their viability.

1. Maintain and build trust throughout the customer life-cycle

With the internet and other technology, consumers now have access to information about vehicle performance, cost of ownership and financing, ownership itself, and more at their fingertips.

With the onslaught of information comes a need for a personalized and relevant customer experience from the vehicle research to the test drive to the replacement stage.

Customers may truly want to come into the dealership for the full experience, but they may feel deterred by various factors, like the “used car salesman” stereotype.

Customers want to trust your business, but first you have to prove that their trust is not misplaced.

Design your customer experiences.

Make them consistent with the brand identity and ensure that they foster trust; build authenticity, transparency, and consistency.

Integrate the ease and convenience of online shopping with a good, helpful in-store experience.

2. Provide an engaging digital experience

You can’t buy a car online, but a large part of the process is already on the internet.

To make the most of it, you need to make sure you provide an enhanced customer experience using digital and social media to increase customer satisfaction.

Your dealership website could be the first thing a customer ever sees relating to your business, and you want it to make a good first impression.

Your site should be user-friendly and intuitive; if people click away from the page, your business is losing opportunities.

Ask yourself: does our site gain the consumer’s trust?

Does it simplify the process and make the consumer want to engage?

Don’t cut out the human element entirely, either; customer-dealership interaction is great for delivering information, answering specific questions, and guiding customers through the car buying process.

The online buying experience should seamlessly blend the advantages of new technology and human communication.

3. Be flexible and open to redesign

With new tech comes new approaches.

Make your retail networks more streamlined to maintain profitability.

You may need to trim some traditional retail networks or reorganize floorspace to complement the digital experience.

Don’t shy away from new distribution strategies (e.g. direct selling, mobile stores, test drive centers, boutique stores, online platforms).

4. Offer an omni-channel approach

Dealers and automakers interact with their customers via a multi-channel approach, which can be useful as it enables different sources and ways to collect information.

The problem is that the different channels don’t always work well together, creating an incoherent customer experience.

Customers want a seamless experience where they have the freedom and flexibility to move between a variety of information sources and receive a similar experiences across the channels.

Your dealership can - and should - take advantage of new available technology, but there’s one important detail to keep in mind: the automotive sales business is still a “people business.”

You cannot completely replace personal touches with impersonal widgets and other new additions to your websites.